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A must have piece of equipment for anyone who will go anywhere, anytime!

Five years ago I attended the "In Focus" exhibition at the NEC which is one of the largest annual exhibitions for professional photographers and photography enthusiasts in the world. When I was there, I got talking to a group of photographers who, during the process of our conversation, recommended certain products to me. One of these products was the Gebe Card Safe Extreme, which I subsequently bought from the Jessops stand for about £16.

Basically, what the Gebe Card Safe Extreme is, is a holder for your cameras memory cards. I travel a fair bit and take my photography fairly seriously, and so everywhere I travel, I like to have several memory cards with me at any one time. I also like to be sure that these memory cards are going to be protected, irrelevant of the conditions in which I might find myself. Some of the places I have visited have been a little off the beaten track and subject to extreme conditions - and having this small piece of equipment to store my memory cards in helps to give me piece of mind.

My Card Safe is bright red and measures 10 cms x 2.5 cms x 7.7 cms in dimensions. It is fairly lightweight and without any cards in it, it weighs just under 100 g. Therefore it is small enough to fit in a small handbag or pocket, although usually I keep mine in my camera bag along with the rest of my equipment. I have to say that you just need to look at and handle this product to tell it is very high quality and will probably last a lifetime.

The Card Safe has room for 4 cards at any one time and it can hold cards that are MMCT, SD, Smart Media, Compact Flash or Memory Stick. Because of the way the inserts are designed, cleverly, you can insert any one of these memory cards in the slots without having to modify the insert. Whichever card you are using, the card will fit snuggly and securely in the insert. This is ideal for me because when I travel I often take two cameras - my DSLR which takes CF cards, and my happy snappy Powershot which takes Memory Stick.

When this was sold to me, I was told that this product was virtually indestructible ......and so it has proved over the years! I have even dropped it down the toilet when I forgot it was in my pocket, and the cards inside stayed clean and dry!! I have also spoken to another photographer who told me that their toddler threw their Card Safe into the waste disposal....which broke the waste disposal, but there was not a scratch on the Card Safe itself. Pretty impressive!

According to the manufacturers, the Card Safe is shock resistant, crushproof, dustproof, watertight and it floats. Like I said, I can personally account for the watertight and floating properties.

There is a reinforced hinge with a stainless steel hinge which means that no matter how many times you open and close the device, the hinge is not going to break or loosen. There is also a strong locking device which will Stay firmly closed unless you unlock it, although unlocking it is easy and takes less than a second to do.

I would highly recommend this product for anyone who is a keen photographer, but particularly for those photographers that travel a little more off the beaten track or visit places with more extreme conditions.